Downtown Tenant Profiles: Teenage Girl

Age/Place of Birth: 15/ Manhattan, NY, moved to Los Angeles recently

Gender: female

Income: $400 a year babysitting

Occupation: high-school student

Marital Status: no

“Lifestyle”: Ballet, but not that into it anymore, plays the piano, also not that into it anymore, hanging out with her friends, goes to a prep-school in Los Feliz, Dad works Downtown, Mom works in Hollywood, on her way to Hollywood she drops her off at school. Allowed to ride the Metro by herself, her friends love to sleep over t her house cause her parents are cool. Likes to take the metro to City Walk to hang out with friends. Wants to be more independent, needs lots of privacy. Really looking forward to prom.

Products: Ballet shoes, clothes, music, internet, cell phone, make-up

Car: no car. Her parents, though own two cars.

Hobbies:

vices: boys, smoked once or twice.

Program:
Two Bedroom + den
office
full kitchen
Walk in closets
Two bathrooms


Building Requirements:
Rooftop pool
Security
Outdoor gathering space
Party room
Her parents want her to be contented within the building


Commercial:
Coffee Shop
Corner Store
Bookstore



Immediate Vicinity:
Movie Theater
Restaurants
Other cafes
Shops

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Stylist

Age/Place of Birth: 38/ the Valley in LA

Gender: male

Income: $55,000

Occupation: Stylist

Marital Status: Lives with partner

“Lifestyle”: Commutes to Silverlake and Hollywood for work, has two dogs, lives with partner, likes to go to bars, regularly goes to the gym and stay in shape, loves to cook, loves to have dinner parties, hikes in Griffith park, drives his dogs to the Silverlake dog park. He is super into clothes and MIMO style and cowboy chic.

Products: Cuisinart, dog supply, shoes, gourmet food and wine, magazines, Martha Stewart, gym equipment.

Car: He and his partner share a BMW s.u.v., “you know, cause they’re environmentally conscious”

Hobbies: cooking, entertaining, occasional cruises to the carribbian, hanging out with the dogs

vices: fine cuisine

Program:
Single studio with upper loft
Large kitchen with island
Balcony
Bathtub
Walk in closet
Big entertainment area

Building Requirements:
Rooftop lap pool
Security
Nice lobby
Dog-friendly
Outdoor gathering space


Commercial:
Corner store
Restaurant
Deli


Immediate Vicinity:
More restaurants
Mom and pop specialty stores

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Single Mother

Age/Place of Birth: 28/Mexicali, Mexico

Gender:Female

Income:$23,000 combined family income

Occupation: apparel worker

Marital Status: divorced

“Lifestyle”: Has three young children ages, 2, 4, and 9, her widower father lives with her, she cooks at home for the family, her children are bussed to school.

Products: buys groceries, baby supply,

Car: no car

Hobbies: Goes to church, bible study, likes to go to the park with her children. Enjoys outdoor activities such as barbecues, large community of family and friends.

Fetishes: the bible.

Program:
Unit Requirements:
3-5 bedroom
1-2 1/2 bathrooms
full kitchen and dining space, living area

Building Requirements:
Outdoor gathering space
Outdoor play space
Laundry Facilities



Commercial:

Day Care Facilities
Corner store

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Senior Couple

Age/Place of Birth: 68/ San Diego, California

Gender: female

Income: $50,000

Occupation: retired nurse

Marital Status: Lives with her husband who is a still working merchant marine.

“Lifestyle”: She loves to paint, learning how to use a computer, loves to read, listens to jazz, volunteers her time at a vaccination clinic, playing cards with her girlfriends, goes on a cruise twice a year with her husband, visits her grand-kids, really concerned about the homeless issue in Los Angeles.

Products: painting supplies, flower pots, bulk food, cheap restuarants

Car: Two cars, he drives a Cadillac, she drives a PT Cruiser

Hobbies: painting, playing cards, cruises, collecting trinkets for grandkids, square-dancing, avoiding the car, they enjoy going to the track once in a while

vices: bloody marries.

Program:
Two Bedroom
office
full kitchen
Walk in closet
den

Building Requirements:
Rooftop lap pool
Security
Nice lobby
Dog-friendly
Area to walk


Commercial:
Inexpensive but nice Restaurant
Deli


Immediate Vicinity:
Costco
Museums
Movie theater
club

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Pilates Instructor

Age/Place of Birth: 31/ Costa Mesa, CA
Gender: female

Income: $32,000, but parents have money

Occupation: Pilates instructor at Gold’s Gym, Downtown

Marital Status: single

“Lifestyle”: Loves the beach, the outdoors, yoga, pilates, travels to mostly Europe but Thailand last summer, practices a mixture of Buddhism/Kabala, and is into feng-shui. Likes organic food, but doesn’t prepare it for herself. Loves to get massages, A little manic/depressive. Wants to have a baby, but doesn’t have a dude.

Products: juicer she never uses, Italian expresso machine, lots of incense, organic foods, healthy food to go, wine, yoga gear, pilates gear, drops a lot on clothes, shoes, and natural jewelry. Has more “natural” hair and body products than you can imagine.

Car: mini-cooper

Hobbies: All of the above

Fetishes: all of the above

Program:
Unit Requirements:
Studio
(loft like, open plan)
balconiny
walk-in closet
bathtub
full kitchen
full living/dining space
cross-breeze
view

Building Requirements:
Sun-deck/rooftop garden
gym
Laundry Facilities
Jacuzzi
Guest parking


Commercial:

grocery store
specialty shops (Italian deli)
Spa

Immediate Vicinity:
Wine bar nearby
Coffee shop

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Investment Banker

Age/Place of Birth: 61/ Dayton, Ohio

Gender: male

Income: $800,000. ($2-3 mil. Bonus on good years)

Occupation: investment banker

Marital Status: divorced long ago, never remarried

ìLifestyleî: Works a lot, needs a second home in downtown because he hates the commute. Eats at very expensive restaurants, likes to pick up his clients in one of his three cars that he keeps in Downtown. Plays golf, has a personal trainer, travels a lot, he likes to furnish his home with nice things. Likes to be entertained, business sometimes goes around the clock, its all business and play simultaneously. Needs to be able to entertain in style at all hours.


Products: cars, cigars, women, expensive objects, liquor, entertainment, entertaining, flat screen tv.

Car: porsh, hummer, and a vintage jaguar.

Hobbies: cars, golf, travel, making money for himself and for others.

vices: smokes fine cigars, drinks expensive scotch, occasionally does a little cocaine, depending on the kind of client heís with. Order-in women/entertainment.

Program:
Penthouse, 2 bedrooms
walk-in closet
full kitchen
bar
balcony/terrace
full living/dining space
office
library/den
view
security system/safe


Building Requirements:
Three parking spaces
In-house dry-cleaning
An impressive lobby
High security

Commercial:
Corner store
Dark ìHigh classî bar
Rooftop top driving range
Rooftop lap pool


Immediate Vicinity:
restaurants
hotel
cigar lounge
gentlemans club
driving range

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Graphic Designer

Age/Place of Birth: 34/ St.Paul/Minnesota

Gender: male

Income: $89,000

Occupation: Freelance Graphic Designer

Marital Status: very single

“Lifestyle”: Works at home or commutes to Hollywood and Burbank, overweight, physically inactive, likes to order in movie, food, etc., never cooks, drinks lots of coffee, and sometimes takes his work to the local coffee shop.

Products: high-speed wireless internet, net-flicks.

Car: Black Jetta

Hobbies: My Space, watches movies at home, plays x-box, likes to go out to bars, occasionally to gallery openings, reads magazines that he subscribes to but also enjoys perusing at the local newsstand.

Fetishes: magazines, I-pod, software, cool kicks…

Program:
Unit Requirements:
Studio with workspace
1 bathrooms
1/2 kitchen
hang space
(loft like, open plan)

Building Requirements:
Sound-proofing
outdoor internet
Laundry Facilities
Jacuzzi
Rooftop gathering space
View




Commercial:

Coffee shop
Magazine stand
Corner store
Take-out restaurant

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Architect

Age/Place of Birth: 43/ Seattle, WA
Gender: female

Income: $80,000 (may be getting alimony)

Occupation: Architect

Marital Status: getting a divorce

“Lifestyle”: Works a lot, not home very often, has a firm with her soon to be ex-husband, treats her secretary like her personal assistant, (she’s a woman to be reckoned with), eats at hip restaurants, usually combined with business, goes to galleries when she has time, she runs but doesn’t go to the gym, loves to go to bookstores.


Products: wine, cigarettes, strange “artsy” jewelry, computer,

Car: black 1992 BMW

Hobbies: Collects, design books, mid-century modern furniture,

vices: smokes and drinks

Program:
1 bedroom with office space
walk-in closet
full kitchen
full living/dining space
cross-breeze
view

Building Requirements:
gym
Jacuzzi
Guest parking
Outdoor wireless space


Commercial:
Dry-cleaning
Corner store
specialty shops (Italian deli)


Immediate Vicinity:
restaurant
Coffee shop

Downtown Tenant Profiles: Japanese Exchange Student

Age/Place of Birth: 21/ Tokyo, Japan

Gender: female

Income: Parental support

Occupation: student at FIDM

Marital Status: dating a drummer

“Lifestyle”: Loves American Noise Bands, loud music, karaoke singing, vintage clothes, likes to go to flee markets, doesn’t drink, doesn’t dress of the rack, everything is customized, cooks at home, sometimes in little Tokyo, likes Mexican food, fashion shows, installations, into underground art, illegally exports American denim to Japan.

Products: Japanese and Mexican food, vintage clothing, guitar, ikea furniture, stereo system with record player, no tv!,

Car: drives a Honda Scooter

Hobbies: sewing clothes, collecting toasters, singing karaoke

vices: sneaks a few cigs and occasional pot.

Program:
Single studio with upper loft
Work/creative space
Industrial Features
1/2 kitchen, small eating area.
Mini balcony/fire-escape

Building Requirements:
Industrial Features, feels edgy
Rooftop pool
Pool table
Security (for parental concern and for the safety of her little bike)

Commercial:
Corner store
Ramen restaurant

Immediate Vicinity:
Music venue
Thrift shop
Street life
Vintage furniture store opened till midnight

The New Old: or, Urban Renewal and the Architecture of Appropriation

On the edge of the country in “edgy” downtown Los Angeles, the AIA boldly proclaimed the theme of the 2006 convention: Architecture on the Edge. Thousands of architects descended from all corners of the country to the Los Angeles Convention Center for a weekend to gaze off the edge into the abyss of the future.
But the abyss was really a lake, and what they were seeing was the tortured reflection of a forgotten city.
To be on the edge of something means that it has been traversed. It implies an accumulation of memory. It means experience. It means history. A future without history is a dream. A future with history is politics. And a future with counterfeit history is architecture. For the architect, the past is only as good as it fits an agenda for the future. The architect rationalizes the dream (the future without history) with history to justify it and distort the lens through which we gaze. We call it “Vision” and charge a premium.
It was this history that was told over the weekend.

Urban Next
So what is the future of LA? Moderated by Chris Hawthorne, writer for the Los Angeles Times, a panel made up of Eric Moss, Architect, Jan Perry, Councilwoman, Tom Gilmore, Developer, and Stephanos Polyzoides, Architect and Urbanist, sought to set the record straight. As a proclaimed New Urbanist, Polyzoides sees Los Angeles as a failure. For him, urban sprawl and the freeway system destroyed the city, creating an homogenous ooze without center or boundary, character or direction. By looking to history for urban ideas and architectural forms, Polyzoides believes that we can re-plan our cities and fix the problems that we have created through our disorganization.
On the other side of the literal and metaphorical table sat Eric Moss, who, while acknowledging failures of the city, sees LA as a great experiment in city planning, or perhaps a city without planning. LA, he states, is an exporter, not an importer, of ideas, culture, architecture, and urbanity. LA, he believes, has very unique needs, and therefore designs that may have proven successful in other places and times, however one may judge success, cannot work in LA. Our history, our geography, our economy, our culture is not in line with New York or Boston or Paris or London or Berlin. Therefore, we should not design our city as such. Instead, we should acknowledge our failures and use them to generate new solutions. Massive transportation infrastructure, while in some ways detrimental for the city and environment, could be seen as foundations for new development. The LA River, for example, could be a place of new development for housing, retail, and recreation. For him, history is relevant in as much as it can be rewritten to suit our current use.
As an import from New York, Tom Gilmore provided another historical perspective and vision for the future for Los Angeles. Gilmore has made his business in LA in urban redevelopment, buying old, empty buildings and remodeling them into housing, restaurant, and retail spaces. Though his presentation was filled with historical photographs of downtown, history, or rather, an historical context of architecture, is meaningless to him. Architecture as he sees it, is nothing more than infrastructure. It may be re-appropriated for different uses, regardless of original intent. Form is divorced from program, and refill becomes the language through which architecture is expressed.



Downtown
It is easy to see the draw of downtown for its new residents and the cause for celebration among politicians, planners, and developers. For many, a downtown revitalization is the culmination of years of dreams and disappointments, since the first city-dweller packed up and left for the comforts of the suburb. Today, Downtown, with its history, romance, and diversity, seems the idyllic place for a renewed expression of urbanity and culture. But it is not enough to get people to visit downtown; the real success comes only in keeping people downtown—to make it their neighborhood and a worthwhile investment. It is the ‘artist’s loft’ that is the mechanism for this transformation: rooted in history, grungy and provocative, it presents an ‘anti-suburb’, a place for the expression of a new generation of white-collar workers raised on the streets of suburbia.
The interest in the loft began in 1999, with the passing of Los Angeles’ “adaptive reuse ordinance,” responsible for relaxed parking, zoning, and seismic-safety rules to allow historic buildings to be converted into residential spaces . This was a substantial opportunity for developers, who had long had their eyes on the cheap commercial high-rises of historic downtown, as places to create new ‘lofts,’ billed in the Los Angeles Times as “apartments with the high ceilings and big windows favored by the young and the restless.” Tom Gilmore, a landscape architect-turned-developer, opened the first of these projects in the Old Bank District in 2000 with three building conversions—the Continental, the Hellman, and the San Fernando—along 4th Street at Main and Spring Streets, bordering skid row . These buildings total 240 lofts with retail space at street level, including shops and restaurants, and cost a total of $37 million—monies acquired through city loans and a federally guaranteed mortgage . Despite setbacks and cost overruns, the project was a huge success, selling out all units and generating a substantial waiting list.
Other developers were quick to jump on the loft boom. Of a potential fifty historic buildings qualified for loft conversions, forty-four are at or near completion . Candidates are former offices, factories, and hotels, stripped down of their numerous refinishes and scraped clean of years of neglect, revealing an “innate charm of these old buildings designed in beaux-arts, renaissance revival, and 15th-century Florentine palazzo-inspired architectural styles” . So successful were the initial building sales and conversions that the city once again expanded conversion codes to include post-1974 construction . This change in code paved the way for unlikely conversions—Modernist curtain-wall office blocks devoid of much of the charm and history of the older Historic Core structures. All in all, 4,487 units are being built, with permits granted for another 1,383 .
But the loft boom is not confined to existing-building conversions, and a clear ‘loft typology’ has emerged. Many ground-up developments are happening along Grand Avenue and Figueroa, a short distance from the Staples Center, modeled after the historic conversions taking place to the north. These new structures are described by Dan Mies of the Urban Land Institute as:
‘vertical lofts,’ preferred by young, creative urban dwellers, who are looking for flexibility, volume, and durable design. In response to that market, high-rise loft buildings with raw concrete frame structures and floor-to-ceiling glass are being developed. The units are flexible, with few interior partitions, and have industrial finishes and fixtures, and higher-than-average ceilings. The advantage of this more Spartan approach to finishes is that the money once spent on fake Mediterranean detailing can now go to upgraded, professional-quality kitchens and higher-quality interior materials. Architecturally, these buildings fit in well with the context of downtown.

Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Meieran, owner of a 1910 high-rise-cum-loft said “I’ve seen people building some [new developments] from scratch that are actually more industrial-looking than the ones we’re building, which is always weird.” .
Only in its ability to create an image and generate hype has the urban loft been a success, much in the same way that the suburbs attracted people out of Downtown in the forties and fifties. Suburbs were the victory of private industry—developers buying massive tracts of land for pennies, subdividing them and selling them—houses, yards, and the American Dream. It was up to the family to ‘accessorize,’ to fill up the empty house with all of the goods required by a successful and ambitious American family.
It is not difficult to see the parallels to the current situation. Ultimately, the renewal of downtown is the privatization of public space and policy—gentrification accomplished under the guise of the public good. Through an examination of its history, I will demonstrate how the privatization and branding of downtown is both responsible for and symptomatic of the corporate urbanism that has shaped Los Angeles. Corporate urbanism is the city as an extension of private equity, market forces, and corporate image, manifest in public policy and built form. Corporate urbanism, therefore, is a language and a truth, a codified and enforceable mechanism for self-perpetuation and the generation of wealth.
Ultimately, this brand of planning is anti-historical. It corrupts and rewrites an history to make itself more relevant, more accepted. It is a marketing tool, manipulating images of the past and of the present, with the aim of creating both nostalgia and excitement. In doing so, it masks the real issues of the place, telling a selective history to a select audience, destroying the diversity of the place and its constituents.

Homogenization
In the 1920s, downtown was the burgeoning financial center of the Western United States, home to some of the largest corporations of the day, companies like Union Oil, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance, Southern California Edison, Security-First National Bank, and the Pacific Electric Railway . Spring Street was the “Wall Street of the West,” home to the biggest banks that were responsible for financing the city’s future in film, manufacturing, and construction. By 1930, one-fourth of Los Angeles’ male workforce, over 100,000 men, held white-collar jobs in the crowded high-rises of the city . Clark Davis describes this environment and the people who created it in an essay, The View from Spring Street: “In a society which held economic autonomy and occupational independence as the very measures by which one became a man,” the white-collar office job was seen as “an appropriate starting point in a young man’s career…” . But the people between the walls of the Old Bank District were not just anyone, according to Davis:
Rather than seeing a massive population from which to recruit employees, [employers] looked down from their offices onto a community that they divided into explicit categories of desirable and undesirable applicants. Leaders had a distinct vision of the kinds of men they wanted to hire for white-collar “career” positions, and in their considerations, experience, training, and skills were not the only important items. Officials began with fundamental conceptions about what kind of people would best suit corporate interests, and, more often than not, these reflected dominant constructions of gender, race, and ethnicity.

Employers looked to establish a corporate culture that reinforced an image of stability and success, and the selection, training, and environment of the worker were the means by which this was executed. In many cases, this resulted in simple racism.
In the chapter “Docile Bodies” of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, this idea of selection and training as an assertion of power is explained in what Foucault describes as ‘docility’: “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved.” Central to the creation of ‘docility’ is discipline:
Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an ‘aptitude,’ a ‘capacity’, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection. If economic exploitation separates the force and the product of labour, let us say that disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the constricting link between an increased aptitude and an increased domination.

Through discrimination in the selection of employees and the subsequent codification of attire and behavior in the white-collar environment, employers were able to subjugate their employees, making them ‘docile.’ The very phrase, “white-collar,” as well as the associations of its wearer and environment, is a direct result of this assertion of corporate power over culture, manifesting itself in the very dress of its constituency. Furthermore, the distinction of “white-collar” from “blue-collar” creates an hierarchy, defining white-collar workers by what they are not. Played out in the offices of Spring Street, this was an assertion of power and the establishment of the corporation as the dominant force in city life in Los Angeles. But at the root of this was a desire to homogenize the corporation to make it more regular, more efficient, and less controversial. By controlling the race, behavior, and attire of the worker, these corporations were able to extend their control past the workspace and into the home.
But the notion of docility extends beyond the individual and the disciplinary entity beyond the corporation. In this manner, corporate architecture was able to reach beyond the local building and into the universal planning of the city. Foucault describes architecture as an agent in the disciplining of the body in four terms:
1. Discipline sometimes requires an enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself. It is the protected place of disciplinary monotony…
2. But the principle of ‘enclosure’ is neither constant, nor indispensable, nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery. This machinery works space in a much more flexible and detailed way. It does this first of all on the principle of elementary location of partitioning. Each individual has his own place, and each place its individual…Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed…
3. The rule of functional sites would gradually, in the disciplinary institutions, code a space that architecture generally left at the disposal of several different uses…
4. In discipline, the elements are interchangeable, since each is defined by the place it occupies in a series, and by the gap that separates it from the others. The unit is, therefore, neither the territory (unit of domination), nor the place (unit of residence), but the rank: the place one occupies in a classification…

This provides ample description of the offices of the 1920s, homogenous spaces akin to factory floors with desks describing personal enclosures and the placement of these desks an indication of rank. Regardless of program or branding, the office buildings of the twenties were essentially the same—reinforced concrete-frame or steel-frame structures with large, operable windows to provide natural light and ventilation. Differentiation occurred on the exterior as façade as ornament. Tom Gilmore, owner and developer of three historic buildings, says of them, “they were conceived within a traditional Beaux-Arts template that was very predictable in their time. No matter how unique they seem today, they actually belong to a stamped-out architectural custom.”
The ghosts of 1920s Spring Street still inhabit the buildings, as do Foucault’s disciplines of individuals in space. Ideas of enclosure, partitioning, functional sites, and rank are all prevalent in the current loft typology. Buildings, after they are stripped down to their most essential elements, are re-partitioned along Foucauldian ideas, “an old architectural and religious method: the monastic cell. Even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular.” Describing cubicles of lofts, this description holds true. With the loft, the inside is left empty except for essential infrastructure—a kitchen and a bathroom—lacking interior partitions or conventional (suburban) finishes with the idea that the user appropriates it to his/her different needs. It is meant to be a place for freedom and expression with the flexibility required by an artist. But homogeneity is re-enforced through the construction of the ideal loft—oftentimes a real ‘model’ that is kept maintained but unoccupied at all times within the building—a marketing and imaging strategy.
Furthermore, an image is created and marketed by the romanticizing of these loft spaces as being different from the typical Los Angeles dwelling and more like the lofts of the New York art scene of the 1970s and ‘80s. One only needs to look at the marketing materials and websites of Downtown lofts to see this. On the website for the Higgins Building, a 1910 office block on 2nd Street and Main Street, an animation describes the spaces as “New York Lofts,” with “LA Style.” An advertisement for the Pacific Electric Lofts on 6th Street and Main Street tout an “urban haven of culture and attitude…the history of your making” . The website for the Roosevelt Lofts on 7th Street and Flower go one step further, describing the building as providing “urban living, resort lifestyle” . Whatever the advertisement, the idea is to romanticize the city and sell a lifestyle, historical context aside.
Originally, the architecture of these spaces was an attempt to subjugate employees, done in conjunction with discipline enforced by the discrimination and codification of individuals, resulting in a homogenous army of white-collar workers and consumers. Today, as these spaces are refilled, a similar attempt at corporate discipline is occurring, the mechanism no longer the profession but the lifestyle. In the twenties, the bait was what Clark Davis described as “ ‘rags to respectability and riches’ ideal of American culture” . Today, it is the downtown described in the LA Times as a “vibrant center in which to live, work, and play.” The commercialized loft typology is an assertion of discipline. It is an idealization and branding of a respected and mysterious cultural figurehead—the artist—the seeming antithesis of industry, marketing, and suburban comforts. It is thus a perfect guise under which to re-privatize downtown, giving credence to a new housing boom that is filling the coffers of developers.

Discrimination
The grips of corporate urbanism extend beyond the enclosure and into the street. Essential to any downtown revitalization, according to many of the developers responsible for it, is the creation of an active and vibrant streetscape where pedestrians can wander and shop and eat and play. Ultimately, the goal is the creation of the ‘24-hour downtown’ {read ‘Manhattan’}. But LA is not Manhattan—it doesn’t have its geography, history, or society. Rather, LA makes its own history, recycling images of itself through a vast Hollywood image factory that imports ideas and culture, reprocesses it, and distributes it until the translation is more real than the input. It is therefore not surprising that the model for ‘Manhattanizing’ downtown is appropriated from the suburbs. In an article in the Los Angeles Times about Mark Weinstein, the developer responsible for the megadevelopment ‘Santee Court,’ a collection of lofts, condominiums, and retail spaces, such an urban strategy is discussed:
Standing atop one of his buildings, at 746 Los Angeles, Weinstein looks down on the alley that connects the structures (he owns it, too). Where I see loading docks, small parking lots and windblown litter, he sees a cobblestone way lined with hip cafes, bars and shops that open all the way through to Los Angeles Street. He sees a courtyard area with landscaping and a fountain. “Like the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica,” he says. “Like Old Town Pasadena.” Santee Court will succeed because it provides its own critical mass, while adding to the slowly accreting mass destined to explode in a blaze of resident-friendly redevelopment throughout downtown.

Weinstein, who has developed 3 million square feet worth of residential and commercial property (including in Old Town Pasadena), describes himself as an “accountant-type developer” who doesn’t take undue chances.

Downtown is not being revitalized—rather, it is being reinvented in the image of the rest of LA to lure people back to Downtown under the guise of familiarity. The goal is not urban renewal and public good but the creation of private space and wealth. Can we not see the same thing in the ubiquitous gated communities, the homogenized communities without place, familiar across all geographies and locales? In Downtown, without the space of the suburb, this strategy is changed in its scale. The foyer and doormen are the new gates, courtyard and alleyway the new big-box retail centers.
Tom Gilmore says of his strategy in the development of urban alleyways, “I really believe in the power of urban alleys…We want to install lighting, landscaping and generally make the alley livable.” But livable for whom? How many homeless already call the alleys home? Will they be allowed to bathe in the new fountains, to sleep in the new gardens? Where does the stale stench of urine and vomit fit into this idealized vision for Downtown? Ultimately, these desires of developers aim to soften the hard edges of downtown, to make it more attractive, more comfortable, more familiar. It is to make downtown more suburban, more marketable to the suburban dweller with his middle-income dollar. The grass is not greener on the other side, but it is definitely more hip. But it comes at the expense of displacing a large constituency of people who already call downtown home. It is discrimination, but a discrimination far more subversive than the racism of the 1920s.
After the collapse of Downtown in the 1950s and before the rebirth of 2000, it was essentially two downtowns: the sparkling office towers of Bunker Hill and the derelict Latino shopping district centered on Broadway. In the past, these shops, with their colorful signs and imposing steel shutters, generated enough income for the landlords to keep the buildings at least standing, even if the upper floors lay vacant and derelict . The other undesirable aspect of downtown is slightly to the east, its constituency described in the LA Times: “in the center of the nation’s largest skid row, are the have-nots, some scurrying to make a buck, some resigned to drink and destitution…The smell of urine rises from the sidewalks where thousands sleep each night. Here are some of society’s hard core losers, sprawled on the fetid sidewalk, drawing gulps from brown paper sacks and making drug deals.”
Today, the primary means for keeping out the ‘undesirables’ is money. Condominiums are currently being sold with price tags from $350,000 to $1.1 million , with rents ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 per month , effectively keeping out the former Latino and low-income population, and forcing many of the artists out to surrounding neighborhoods. But it is not just high rent that is causing the demographic displacement. The shift of public money to private enterprise has effectively removed one of the primary sources of low-cost public housing, partly with the desire to discourage new homeless facilities from being built that have the potential of lowering neighboring property values . Again, it has fallen upon private money to address the homeless situation. With a government disinterested in providing for the 8,000 transients living in and around the skid row area, the Midnight Mission, a ninety-year-old institution devoted to feeding and assisting downtown homeless, has turned solely to private donations in constructing its new $17 million facility at Sixth Street and San Pedro .
But the loft is not the only avenue of corporate urbanism—it also extends into the seemingly public realm of cultural institutions and the creation of public space. Since its demise as a civic center, a downtown cultural renaissance has been the dream of Los Angeles planners, politicians, and businesses. Initial civic improvement was aimed at establishing cultural institutions in the downtown area. Redevelopment and preservation overtook the slash-and-burn mentality of urban renewal in the early 1980s with the public-private partnerships fostered by LA’s Community Redevelopment Agency, the CRA. The CRA, working with developer Cadillac Fairview and architect Arthur Erikson, conceived the California Plaza , a “megadevelopment,” “11.2 acres” that “features three office-towers, three residential high-rise buildings, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) a luxury hotel, a dance gallery, and parking facilities, all of which are linked through a series of open spaces, courts, and landscaped plazas.” Two high-rises financed by Maguire/Thomas Partners developers were built in conjunction with the CRA, and through density transfers, tax benefits, land sales, and tax increment funds, the CRA was able to raise $110 million in private funds to renovate and expand Bertram Goodhues’s 1926 Los Angeles Public Library . These projects would become the models on which later developments would be based, establishing the market and private investment as the primary drivers for urban planning and redevelopment.
But which ‘public’ is served in these ‘public’ spaces? In their book Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Tridib Banerjee discuss the creation of such ‘public’ spaces as California Plaza and Citicorp Plaza and the discrimination created by them. Banerjee and Loukaitou-Sideris describe the desire of California Plaza:
The current site of California Plaza was the last piece of undeveloped land in Bunker Hill. These five unified blocks were seen by the CRA as a unique opportunity to give Bunker Hill an active “heart,” an environment that could combine commercial and cultural activities, and act as a regional magnet tourists, residents, and office workers.

The CRA, a public agency, was clearly targeting a white-collar constituency at the expense of creating a truly ‘public’ space. The other people that call Downtown home—low-to-no-income dwellers and transients are deliberately excluded through the use of, what Loukaitou-Sideris and Banerjee describe as “ ‘hard’ control…using vigilant private security officers, surveillance cameras, and regulations…” and “ ‘soft’ control” described as “symbolic restrictions: for example, the lack of facilities that could appeal to certain people or encourage functions deemed undesirable (public restrooms, food vendors, sand boxes)…The corporate edifice, thus, becomes intimidating to certain segments of the public.” Discrimination, though, extends beyond public space and into so-called ‘public’ institutions.
More recently, Downtown has reestablished itself as a cultural destination, with new Bunker Hill venues such as Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall and Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. South Park has seen the construction of the Staples Center, an 18,000-seat sports and concert venue home to the Kings, Clippers, Lakers, and Avengers, as well as the sprawling Los Angeles Convention Center. And to the east in Little Tokyo is the Frank Gehry-designed Geffen Contemporary Museum, a warehouse renovation completed in 1983 to house the MOCA’s contemporary art collection. (Ouroussoff, F4). Also in Little Tokyo is the Japanese-American Museum and Noguchi Plaza, an outdoor space home to concerts and cultural events. But who are these institutions for? The cost and security of these museums and venues prohibit large segments of the public from reaping their cultural and financial benefits, reinforcing the dominance of middle-income dwellers in the revitalized downtown.

An History Without a Future, A Future Without an History
Looking into the future, one inevitably finds him/herself looking to the past, with the idea that where we have come from can give us clues to where we will go. The architect’s “Vision” is only as relevant as the history upon which it is based. Thus, the vision of the future is projected upon the past, forcing its relevance and perpetuating its perpetrator. Looking at the AIA Convention, what does it mean to be “On the Edge?” The edge of what? Of whose history?
Some might say that this distortion, this forgetfulness, this disregard for history is LA’s greatest strength. Its history is one of forgetting. The city is therefore a fad that is always relevant. Through its ability to forget, LA is always able to make itself new. The city is always on the edge. It has no stability or character or direction other than that of the moment. Preservation is its antithesis. It is thus a great irony that the biggest change in architecture and urbanity in Los Angeles is coming from one of the oldest, most forgotten parts of the city—its Downtown—and that the model for this revitalization is coming from the very thing that destroyed it, the suburb.

Bibliography

Fogelson, Robert M. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles 1850-1930. Berkeley: UC Press, 1967. 137-163; 247-272.

Davis, Clark. The View from Spring Street, Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s. ed. T. Sitton and W. Deverell. Berkeley: UC Press, 2001. 179-198.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Flannagan, Barbara. “Redefining Downtown L.A.,” Progressive Architecture. Mar.,1985. 22-23.

Newman, Morris. “Discovering the Pedestrian: A new downtown Los Angeles is only a ten-minute walk away,” Landscape Architecture. Jan., 2001. 50.

Abercrombie, Stanley. “Downtown L.A.’s Split Personality,” Preservation. Mar.-Apr., 2000. 76-80.

Maley, Bridget.; Malmstrom, Cathleen.; Phipps, Kellie.; Folb, Brian. “Beyond Safe and Clean: BIDs help create design guidelines for historic downtown Los Angeles,” Urban Land. Feb., 2002. 71-73.

Rosen, Lisa. “Downtown: a work in progress,” L.A. Architect. Mar.-Apr., 2003. 22-27, 42.

Gilmore, Tom. “Infill This,” Log. Fall, 2005. 137-144.

Gilmore, Tom.; Bratton, Denise. “City Within the Old Creating a New: an interview with Tom Gilmore,” L.A. Architect. July-Aug., 2000. 16-21.

Mies, Dan. “Southern California’s ‘lofty’ rise,” Urban Land. Nov.-Dec., 2005. 88-89.

Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia.; Banerjee, Tridib, Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form. Berkeley: UC Press. 1998.

Harris, Robert S., “Downtown Los Angeles: scales of community,” ARCCA: The Journal of the American Institute of Architects, California Council. 2000. 26-29.

Chang, Jade. “Jan Perry,” Metropolis. Jan. 2006. 72, 106.

Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

The Higgins Building, 13 August, 2006, http://www.andrewerie.com/sites/higgins/higgins.html.

Pacific Electric Lofts, 13 August, 2006, http://www.pelofts.com.

The Roosevelt. Have it all. Luxury lofts in downtown Los Angeles, 13 August, 2006, http://rsvlt.com/.


LA Times Articles

Jones, Robert, “The Distant Sound of a Miracle.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 6 Dec. 1998, Home ed.: B1.

Jones, Robert, “COVER STORY; Once More, with Enthusiasm; Tom Gilmore May Be Nothing More Than the Latest Visionary to Crash on the Mean Streets of ‘Urban Renaissance,’ L.A.’s Never-Realized Romance. Then Again, He May Be the First Developer to see the Big Picture.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 3 Oct. 1999, Home ed.: Los Angeles Times Magazine 10.

Mozingo, Joe. “Ceremony Marks a Vision of Hope for St. Vibiana’s; Development: Both preservationists and city officials say buyer’s plan will rehabilitate the old cathedral’s legacy and surroundings.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 3 Nov. 1999, Home ed.: B1.

Sanchez, Jesus. “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE; ‘50s-Era Downtown High-Rise Slated to be Turned Into Hotel; The plan comes as central city inns are enjoying a resurgence of business. Several other projects are under study.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 25 Jan. 2000, Home ed.: C1.

Landsberg, Mitch. “SPECIAL REPORT; Old Becomes New in the Changing Face of Downtown; Long-Neglected Districts Being Revived, Buildings Rejuvenated in a Transforming L.A.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 13 Aug. 2000, Home ed.: B1.

Berton, Brad. “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE; Developer Plans to Breathe Life Into Historic Palace Theatre; Tom Gilmore, already busy restoring other downtown sites, wants to bring live performances back to one of L.A.’s oldest venues.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 8 Feb. 2000, Home ed.: C1.

Krikorian, Greg.; Hong, Peter. “Builder Got Break on Safety Rules; Housing: City program relaxed some code requirements, but some inspectors say hazards existed. Top officials, developer deny risks.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 7 Jul. 2002, Home ed.: B1.

Mithers, Carol Lynn. “ESSAY; Ghosts of Downtown; How You Get From $1.75 Lunches to $2,000-a-Month Lofts Depends on Many Things, Such as the Death of Urban Self-Loathing.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 22 Sep. 2002, Home ed.: I14.

Ricci, James. “Metropolis / Snapshots from the Center of the Universe; Another Victory in the Quest to Transform Downtown.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 3 Feb. 2002, Home ed.: Los Angeles Times Magazine 1.

Vincent, Roger.; Dickerson, Marla. “The State; COLUMN ONE; Rebirth of Core Values; It’s no Manhattan, but downtown L.A. is starting to feel like a real neighborhood. For many, it’s simple: That’s where the housing is.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 12 Jul. 2003, Home ed.: A1.

Rivera, Carla. “California; Midnight Mission Growing Even as Downtown Gentrifies; Construction of a facility for the homeless raises questions about how the indigent will coexist with new loft dwellers.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 15 Dec. 2003, Home ed.: B1.

Bernstein, Sharon. “Give Up the Suburb? Yes. Give Up the Car? No Way.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 27 Dec. 2004, Home ed.: A1.

McGreevy, Patrick.; Krikorian, Greg. “Loan History May Be Issue in Project; Developer selected to take over L.A. Theatre Center has had trouble repaying money owed to the city, a nonprofit group and a contractor.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 5 Jan. 2004, Home ed.: B1.

DiMassa, Cara Mia. “Crossroads Nears in Downtown Loft Boom; As L.A.’s converted units fill, the city is working to expand the revival. But growth faces obstacles.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 20 Jun. 2005, Home ed.: A1.

Vincent, Robert. “L.A.’s Reticent Relics; Downtown housing developers are uncovering treasures and problems from the past as they race to restore and convert dilapidated buildings.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 27 Nov. 2005, Home ed.: C1.

Heffley, Lynne. “Latino Theatre to manage LATC.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 20 Mar. 2006, Home ed.: E3.

Vontz, Andrew. “Metropolis / So SoCal; Introducing Tomorrow’s Historic Walking Tour.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 15 Dec. 2002, Home ed.: I10.

Hawthorne, Christopher. “ARCHITECTURE REVIEW; Their declarations of independence.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 12 Aug. 2005, Home ed.: E1.

Sanchez, Jesus. “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE; SCI-Arc Breaking Ground on Downtown L.A. Campus.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 27 Mar. 201, Home ed.: C8.

Johnson, Reed. “DOWNTOWN LIKE NEVER BEFORE; INNER LIFE; Reinventing itself; The waiting is over. The center of the city is bursting with new lofts and luxury apartments, drawing new residents who are bringing it alive with promise.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 16 Oct. 2003, Home ed.: F11.

Gordon, Larry. “Building Creative Tension; Education: The Southern California Institute of Architecture restructures itself-a little-as the acclaimed nonconformist college edges toward the mainstream.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 17 May 1995, Home ed.: 1.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “ARCHITECTURE; A Tricky Move; Southern California Institute of Architecture’s choice of a new home could have a lasting effect on L.A.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 4 Oct. 1998, Home ed.: 60.

Mayne, Thom. “COMMENTARY; A Downtown Resource in Danger.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 9 May 2005, Home ed.: B11.

Wedlan, Candace. “Design Notes; A Thououghly Modern Take on 1907 Depot Building.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 9 Aug. 2001, Home ed.: E2.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “COVER STORY; A Core Dilemma; The Grand Avenue ‘Cultural Corridor’ on Bunker Hill is aloof from the grittier but humanizing reality below. Can the two visions of downtown L.A. be reconciled.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 18 Aug. 2002, Home ed.: F4.

Sanchez, Jesus. “Architecture School Plans Move to Edge of Downtown; Education; Westside institute’s proposal for old railway building in artist’s district is major boost for central city revitilization.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: 19 Apr. 2000, Home ed.: B1.

process, projects, planning, and planners

PROCESS, PROJECTS, PLANNING, and PLANNERS

Planning professionals, developers, Wall Street investors and the like consider the rhetoric of Project Planning the only approach to city re-vitalization worth talking about. Project Planners dismiss anything that places more confidence in the judgment of citizens as irrelevent.

Opponents of Project Planning recognize and celebrate the complexity of urbanism and the interconnectedness of all components.

Change – the creation of sense of place – begins not with center-of-strength organizations, such as the New Urban Town Builders Collaborative, but with neighborhood relationships. It is the neighborhood narratives of place that are the roots of neighborhood revitalization. Neighborhoods cannot be dragged out of stagnation by developers, even the New Urbanists. If neighborhoods have no shared vision for their future there is no future. Shared neighborhood vision cannot be imposed from outside in, it must arise organically within.

Creating a sense of place requires community in the truest sense of that word. Not just a bunch of people, but people who come together as one to create shared vision, a vision that leads to a sense of neighborhood, of place. Of course, for this to happen, there first has to be a community of people residing in a neighborhood. New Economy Towns start with the buildings and hope that real community will eventually come about in time. In spite of the New Urbanist talk about place making and neighborhood building, the New Urbanism is, more often than not, nothing more than soothingly disguised profit making at the expense of others, at best, and at worst, ill-advised social engineering,
given that manufacturing and services have all relocated to more profitable locations, cities increasingly exist to cater to a spectacle-filled lifestyle...places where we consume urban lifestyle rather than actually creating it.

"Urban Husbanders" assume assets and resources are already in place to be reinvigorated and built onto in order to stimulate a place-based rejuvenation that adds to the long-evolving, existing strengths, instead of replacing them. Planning is meant to be about problem solving, relying heavily on the expertise of citizen users, the accumulated experience and wisdom of the community. Urban Husbanders advocate introducing change incrementally and monitoring it carefully, providing a great opportunity to learn from each step. They involve many entrepreneurs of various sizes, not just one big developer, and rely only on modest doses of government support, if any. They work to add a layer of organic urban growth rather than replace what has taken decades to grow. This layer may look and feel in many ways radically different from what was there before, but fundamentally the connection between before and after is not broken.

I'm always interested in the ways that place can be branded and re-branded to evoke distinct feelings and experiences. A place's identity extends to the people who inhabit it too, though--and the ways that place becomes an extension of individual and collective identity has a lot of power. the fusion of individual and spatial identity... an actual (or imagined...really the possibilities are endless) place that is personally significant. Creative Class-driven redevelopment efforts: they usually price out the people they attempt to attract. That merely means it is an imperfect system

Cities have two alternatives. They can work to become more competitive in terms of jobs, attracting skilled workers and middle-class families, or they can refocus their efforts on providing playpens for the idle rich, the restless young, and tourists. All too often the latter strategy is what many municipalities appear to be adopting. A number of cities now regard tourism, culture, and entertainment as "core" assets.

lifestyle consumption

LIFESTYLE CONSUMPTION

1. The act or process of consuming a way of life or style of living.

2. The phenomenon of ‘urban branding’ within the context of cities transforming from industrial cities towards cultural, shopping, fun and leisurely urban environments.

“Look No More Factories!’ – Leisure and event cities in the experience economy!

“Urban planners boldly state that ‘there is no such thing as an artificial experience’, which is a clear suggestion that the sky is the limit in terms of turning the city into ever new sites to be consumed. Part of such staging and ‘theming’ has to do with the transformation of leisure and fun into new dimensions of urban experience commodities such as visiting a museum or going to the mall. Short identifies two broad themes of US urban booster campaigns; the ‘city of work’ and the ‘city of play’ (Short 1999:41). As a part of the ‘culture shift’, cities now represent themselves as ‘fun places’ meaning places where the ‘good life’ not only is about employment but increasingly also about ample time for leisure (Short 1999:52).
Developers seek to assemble and sell all the commodities perceived as urban lifestyle essentials such as habits of consumption, dress, and recreation in a confined space. Put the other way around, a single development has broadened into a totality of urban cultural production.

Branding the Contemporary City : Urban branding as Regional Growth Agenda
Ole B. Jensen

defining the 'new'

INSERT INFILL
A new formula in residential development that contains all the elements of an “urban condition” within a single system including retail, restaurants, and entertainment venues.

These developments are often designed around mass transit hubs, encouraging pedestrian communities. Self contained units can be plugged into any “void” as instantly generated neighborhoods.
This approach assumes that by providing these fixed components, an urban lifestyle can be synthesized.


UNDERCOVER BIG BROTHER

(links) * public-private partnerships

A phenomenon that describes the sometimes hidden relationships and partnerships between public and private sectors.

The private sector’s control of public rights, activity, and resources is often made possible through public-private partnerships between corporations and city government. Mega-scale businesses are afforded protection by city government and city bureaucracy benefits from tax revenue generated by developments.
These partnerships are deceptive because they allow the government to act on the behalf of big business under the guise of public good. They generally advance the interests of the private sector and the market under the banner of sharing power with the poor and the state.

The struggle for control of the sidewalks along and intersecting Las Vegas Boulevard South offers an interesting illustration of the power of the larger hotels when coupled with that of government. In 1993 MGM Grand was able to persuade the county commission to give the casino control of the sidewalk alongside its hotel by declaring it to be private property belonging to the casino in return for an easement guaranteeing public access. The casino was thus allowed to have police arrest any “undesirable” members of the public, such as strikers, sidewalk vendors, and sex-industry leafleter for trespassing on its sidewalk. In 1994, Metro police arrested more than five hundred Culinary Union picketers who were demonstrating on “sidewalk private property” belonging to MGM Grand. When a Nevada deputy attorney protested these provisions as unconstitutional he was asked to resign, when he refused, he was fired. The “understanding” between the major casino-hotels of Las Vegas and the city and county police, thus appear to favor the former by providing special government protection in order to benefit the interests of the casino.


Sometimes these partnerships can also take the form of special incentives and resources that the city gives to a developer in exchange for tax revenues generated by the developer’s proposal. In the case of Seattle for example, the city in support of billionaire developer Paul Allen’s proposed development of South Lake Union has approved his Vulcan-backed South Lake Union streetcar, signed off on zoning changes that will allow biotech companies to build taller buildings in the area, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure improvements in South Lake Union, and passed several resolutions expressing support for a biotech hub in the area.

These kind of public private partnerships blur the distinction between private and public life and render zones of the city unclear not only in terms of their character but also their jurisdiction, becoming legally ambiguous.


PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (3P)

A partnership between the public and private sector for the purpose of delivering a project or service which was traditionally provided by the public sector. Controversially, public private relationships have diverted monies earmarked for public benefits to private interests or as private profit.

The PPP process recognizes that both the public sector and the private sector have certain advantages relative to the other in the performance of specific tasks, and can enable public services and infrastructure to be provided in the most economically efficient manner by allowing each sector to do what it does best. These emergent political alliances were clearly, though not always explicitly, committed to economic growth (particularly downtown) with the private sector as the primary engine for, and beneficiary of, that development.
Although urban renewal was launched and initially justified as an effort to improve the housing condition justified as an effort to improve the housing conditions of low-income residents, it quickly became a massive public subsidy for private business development, particularly downtown commercial real estates. In the case of the South Lake Union project, Paul Allen's 2001 property deal with the city requires him to build at least 50 units of affordable housing. The city plans to spend an estimated $500 million on infrastructure, utilities, and amenities. The City Council recently approved his plan to construct 35 lower-rate rental units in a new neighborhood development. It replaces a 33-unit vintage low-income building, the Lillian Apartments, which Allen hurriedly tore down in 2002 despite protests. The new structure's lowest rents—$740—will be three times the Lillian's lowest rents. Yet, while partially fulfilling a contractual agreement as part of the 2001 sale, Allen was also able to grab about $3 million in city tax breaks for providing the "low-rent" units.


CROSSDRESSING

The private sector playing dress-up with the publics clothes.

Development corporations combine shopping, entertainment, recreation, and sometimes housing--all the ingredients of an urban lifestyle in a controlled environment that passes itself off as public space. Lifestyle centers simultaneously deny that they are shopping centers and branded environments while at the same time presenting a totalized, themed environment. There is an ambiguous relationship between efforts at generating interest and creating a "sense of place," and the extreme control being exercised by the rules in effect in these places, governing dress and behavior, signage and architecture.

Cross-dressing is private space masquerading as public space, minus any sense of spontaneity or unpredictability, except for that which arouses the senses or encourages you to shop more. Las Ramblas, a new mixed-use casino development under construction on Las Vegas Strip has a four-block promenade mall that takes on all of the characteristics of a public place like its namesake, La Rambla, Barcelona. In essence, it simulates the experience of a public space, by offering outdoor pedestrian elements, such as plazas, and arcades, a variety of retail, and entertainment, but maintains control of allowable activity.


POLITICAL GODFATHERISM

Wealthy individuals who have the power to personally influence public governance and control city resources.

City officials will structure sweetheart real estate deals with developers in exchange for campaign contributions as in the case of Seattle’s Mayor who is being forced to return illegal office fund contributions from Vulcan, Paul Allen’s real estate corporation. A closer examination at what Paul Allen might be getting in return for his 'donation' of $10 million to the city for South Lake Union Park demonstrates the kind of power such individuals can have over city resources. In 2001, the city sold eight South Lake Union properties to one of Allen's 25 real-estate subsidiaries operating under Vulcan's command—in this case, the subsidiary called City Investors XI. Allen got the eight parcels for $20.1 million. According to city planning documents, most if not all of the $20.1 million Allen paid for the land will be reinvested by the city in his neighborhood, mostly for transportation improvements. They are partly vacant, industrial sites and include parking lots. Allen owns 58 acres in the South Lake Union neighborhood, which cost at least $250 million. Besides the $10 million tax deduction from the foundation contribution, his Vulcan holding company is seeking another $10 million in contractual changes involving some of that acreage, which still must be approved by the City Council.


VERTICAL SUBURBANISM
Conventionally suburban development trends affecting an urban context in the form of Vertical Suburban sprawl. Vertical residential mega-structures mimic a suburban formula of simplistic sprawl organizational systems, in a vertical rather then horizontal extension.

What makes the suburb prototypical is the disruption of functional and social complexity and the compulsive consumption of space within a territorial frame. Suburbs do not offer a practical model for a contemporary urban metropolis made of dense and complex neighborhoods because they are repetitive.

Like their suburban counterparts, repeated residential prototypes are equally isolating only denser.



REPETITIVE URBAN PROTOTYPE

Urban design strategies based on mono-typological high-rise structures could well be the exactly proportioned counterpart of horizontal sprawl!



INNIE/OUTIE

A condition that occurs when there is no longer a marked distinction between inside and outside, public space and private space.

Seattle’s Public Library and the Freemont Street Experience in Las Vegas both exemplify aspects of this condition. The Fremont Street Experience, a public/private collaboration between the City of Las Vegas and Downtown casino owners, is an example of urban revitalization that does not change the existing fabric but alters its relationships by introducing a pedestrian condition that renegotiates the casino’s territory and extends its vibrant interior environment into the streets and groups them into a single unit. It demonstrates an effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas by attempting to wrap the entire downtown under a canopy of lights spanning four city blocks.
If you could imagine turning the Freemont Street Experience on its head so that it stood vertically, you might get something like the Seattle Public library which stacks its programmatic zones one atop one another like buildings along a vertical street. OMA calls these programmatic zones "platforms." In ascending order, they are designed for parking; entrance and orientation; community meeting rooms; book stacks and circulation desks; and administration offices. The platforms are staggered to create overhangs on the street, as stipulated by city planners, and to take advantage of city views. The top level of each platform, akin to a roof, is an open, public space. The interior's overhanging platforms have been draped with a metal and glass building skin, as if it were a piece of cloth. Hence the exterior folds to enclose its interior mass. The interior becomes a greenhouse, the exterior a compressed, Rubik's Cube reflecting Downtown Seattle’s skyline.



NEIGHBORHOODIES

Your 'Hood on your Chest,
Your Heart on Your Sleeve

Forget those sweatshirts that say "Brooklyn," or even worse, "New York." Michael de Zayas is here to help you announce to the world through your sweatshirt that you are from one particular neighborhood, one street or, if you want to get really specific, one address.

Mr. de Zayas, 28, is the president and sole employee of Neighborhoodies, a three-month-old business dedicated to making hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with the names of particular neighborhoods. The sweatshirts are made to order for the enclave-conscious shopper, a species that Mr. de Zayas believes is especially prevalent within New York.

"Once you're here, saying 'I love New York' is kind of meaningless," Mr. de Zayas said. "Everyone who lives here loves it, or they leave. So, why do you love New York? It's because you love Fort Greene, or Carnegie Hill, or Astoria."



CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

Individual property owners and ordinary citizens whose rights are violated by abusive government officials who unfairly and unaccountably administer laws and regulations in order to benefit the private sector. With their own objectives in mind, local government and private entities are willing to sacrifice public rights in order to serve their own interests for wealth and power and ordinary citizens are caught in the cross-fire.

Developing small infill parcels can carry a higher cost than larger projects because developers have to assemble numerous parcels. Land costs on residential infill sites in Las Vegas have been estimated to be two to three times the cost of raw land at the fringe. One of the ways around the high costs of developing infill properties is to use eminent domain.

Eminent domain was used in Las Vegas amid a furor of dissent when private property was taken in order to build the so-called Freemont Street Experience. The use of eminent domain in Las Vegas exemplifies how local Government and businesses can abuse the administration of law in order to condemn land privately owned under the guise of public use by transferring the property for private use.



PROCESS, PROJECTS, PLANNING, and PLANNERS

Project Planners dominate the citadels of power. Planning professionals, developers, Wall Street investors, and the like consider Project Planning the only approach worth talking about, the only one requiring complicated financial packages. Only Project Planning, of course, is dependent on them. Project Planners dismiss anything else as irrelevant, anything that places more confidence in the judgment of citizen users. Downtowns are pockmarked with their accomplishments. Only Project Planners, their followers, and the public persuaded by their rhetoric define these downtowns as reborn. Rebuilt yes, reborn, hardly.

Opponents of Project Planning recognize and celebrate the complexity of urbanism and the interconnectedness of all components. These "Urban Husbanders" assume assets and resources are already in place to be reinvigorated and built onto in order to stimulate a place-based rejuvenation that adds to the long-evolving, existing strengths, instead of replacing them. Planning is meant to be about problem solving, relying heavily on the expertise of citizen users, the accumulated experience and wisdom of the community. Urban Husbanders advocate introducing change incrementally and monitoring it carefully, providing a great opportunity to learn from each step. They involve many entrepreneurs of various sizes, not just one big developer, and rely only on modest doses of government support, if any. They work to add a layer of organic urban growth rather than replace what has taken decades to grow. This layer may look and feel in many ways radically different from what was there before, but fundamentally the connection between before and after is not broken.

Creating a sense of place requires community in the truest sense of that word. Not just a bunch of people, but people who come together as one to create shared vision, a vision that leads to a sense of neighborhood, of place. Of course, for this to happen, there first has to be a community of people residing in a neighborhood. New Economy Towns start with the buildings and hope that real community will eventually come about in time. In spite of the New Urbanist talk about place making and neighborhood building, the New Urbanism is, more often than not, nothing more than soothingly disguised profit making at the expense of others, at best, and at worst, ill-advised social engineering,
given that manufacturing and services have all relocated to more profitable locations, cities increasingly exist to cater to a spectacle-filled lifestyle...places where we consume urban lifestyle rather than actually creating it.

Change – the creation of sense of place – begins not with center-of-strength organizations, such as the New Urban Town Builders Collaborative, but with neighborhood relationships. It is the neighborhood narratives of place that are the roots of neighborhood revitalization. Neighborhoods cannot be dragged out of stagnation by developers, even the New Urbanists. If neighborhoods have no shared vision for their future there is no future. Shared neighborhood vision cannot be imposed from outside in, it must arise organically within.



Cities have two alternatives. They can work to become more competitive in terms of jobs, attracting skilled workers and middle-class families, or they can refocus their efforts on providing playpens for the idle rich, the restless young, and tourists. All too often the latter strategy is what many municipalities appear to be adopting. A number of cities now regard tourism, culture, and entertainment as "core" assets.

I'm always interested in the ways that place can be branded and re-branded to evoke distinct feelings and experiences. A place's identity extends to the people who inhabit it too, though--and the ways that place becomes an extension of individual and collective identity has a lot of power. the fusion of individual and spatial identity... an actual (or imagined...really the possibilities are endless) place that is personally significant. Creative Class-driven redevelopment efforts: they usually price out the people they attempt to attract. That merely means it is an imperfect system.

And the truth is that in the great struggle between cities and suburbs, raging now for a century or more, the verdict is finally in: Cities lost. The vast majority of people prefer the ``burbs.'' The long-predicted comeback of the traditional city isn't in the cards.


"DREAM WORLD'

For those of us who love cities, it's hard to believe that the future of civilized life lies in the suburbs. You call that civilized?

``Metropolitan elites live in a dream world,'' Kotkin says. ``If 1,000 people move into lower downtown Denver in the last year, the elites think it's a trend: stories in the newspaper, panel discussions, general celebration. Meanwhile, 10,000 people leave the city for the suburbs, and the elites ignore it.''

Traditional U.S. cities stopped growing 50 years ago and are now shrinking. Since 1950, almost all the growth in U.S. metropolitan areas has been beyond the city limits, in suburbs -- sprawl, in a word.

And the trend seems to be accelerating. Census data released earlier this month show that during the 1990s, one city after another lost population, even as the counties surrounding them grew. In Ohio, for example, Cincinnati's Hamilton County shrunk by 2.4 percent. Neighboring Boone County, in Kentucky, grew 49.3 percent. Even further out from the city, Grant County, Kentucky, grew by 42.2 percent.

``They think they can revive their cities if they make them `hip and cool,''' he says, referring to the street festivals, cafes, arts fairs, high-end boutiques and other yuppie delights that attract the young and single, the childless and rich.

``But that's not how cities last,'' he says. ``You can't build a long-term civic culture around transient populations.''

What any healthy city requires is a stable base of middle- class families. But the conditions necessary for attracting and keeping families are precisely what city planners ignore.

``They've forgotten the basics,'' Kotkin says. ``Are the schools good? Are the streets clean and safe? It's a lot easier to satisfy the yuppies with no kids than to fix the schools.''


PRETTY NOT GRITTY CITY
The solution to urban ills; a solution that claims to sweep clean parts of the city to create an urban landscape that favors “progress over stagnation, science over superstition, prosperity over depression, conservation over wastefulness, beauty over ugliness, serenity over tensions, enchantment over drabness, wealth over squalor, cleanliness over dirtiness, efficiency over inefficiency, success over failure, convenience over inconvenience, comfort over discomfort, security over insecurity, and happiness over unhappiness”.

“It's an entire city all under one roof, to be built and operated by private enterprise alone. There will not be just one, but many such cities throughout the entire world. Boasting no crime, no pollution, and no over-crowding, a veritable utopia for those who've grown weary of trying to find solutions to today's urban problems”.